


Roses and Chrysanthemum

by Remigius



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, psychic Kylo, spooky shit, witch Kylo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:15:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26475535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remigius/pseuds/Remigius
Summary: Sequel toPreordainedHux moves into Kylo's house and somehow still didn't realize how strange it would be.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Kudos: 49





	Roses and Chrysanthemum

Exactly three months after their first kiss, Hux moves into his flat.

“There are things I can’t explain,” Kylo explained to him, “There are tragedies here.” Yet these things never deter Hux from anything.

“I have my own ghosts that I deal with.” He says, and then adds, “If you don’t want me to move in, just tell me.”

Kylo doesn’t bother to explain that it’s not the same, that the ghosts of Hux’s past are solely within him whereas Kylo’s have haunted him for years now. From place to place, no matter where he goes. It’s a part of him now. No priest in the world could hope to cure him of the cacophony of voices and the crowded rooms in which he sits alone. It shouldn’t feel as lonely as it does. And yet.

“I want you to move in,” Kylo tells him, “I want you to be prepared.”

“When it comes to you, I’m never prepared.” Hux tells him, and he chooses to take it as a compliment.

Touching the boxes of Hux’s things conjure all kinds of images, the soft orange tabby that Hux brings with him the first day. Her name is Millicent, and she is immediately incredibly unsettled by him. He can feel her trepidation, and he doesn’t blame her. Animals do see the supernatural, after all.

The greying old man that yells follows a box of old war relics that Hux had inherited and refuse to throw away because ‘they were part of my history, if nothing else.’ Kylo suspects it’s because he’s cleaning on to recognition that he will never receive, a loving father whom he will never know. Like all of the things that he knows unwittingly, Kylo sweeps away this knowledge and pretends that he doesn’t know. It’s better for Hux that way. A conversation about one's father never bodes well, in Kylo's experience. 

Years of service, years of solitude. An aching loneliness that echoes his own. Still he clings to those roses and chrysanthemum, the only pieces of his doting mother that he has left now. Only his memories, and day by day Hux is terrified that he can’t remember his mother’s face.

His father burned all the pictures of her. She now only lives in his memories, and even those are unreliable. Kylo knows it would be crass to tell him that sometimes it’s better that way.

One week after Hux moves in, Kylo knows that he’s seen her. He freezes at the end of a hallway, eyes wide as he stares into nothingness. His lips part, words fail him. He turns to look at Kylo wordlessly, confused.

“I told you there were ghosts.” Kylo says, solemnly. He turns over and goes to sleep.

When morning comes, Kylo fixes himself a piece of toast and tea as he sits down at the breakfast table. She sits down at the other end, despite the fact that she’s long since transcended the need to sit on anything at all or consume anything other than the bite of his feelings. She’d been special, like him. She’d been more special than him, but his parents tried not to think those thoughts in front of him. It doesn’t matter, he still bore the burden of being the family failure anyway. How they’d laugh to know he’s the only one that survived. He was the only one strong enough to.

She tilts her head at him, reading the tone of his emotions. Sometimes she speaks.

Not today.

“It doesn’t matter.” He tells her, “They’re all dead anyway. So are you.”

She looks down at the table in front of her, back up at him. She offers a hand the same way that Hux had for weeks, coming to him for Kylo to hold his hand. Read his mind. Understand him the way that no one else can. He looks at her, shakes his head and eats his toast.

He doesn’t want to know anything about her anymore, if he even could read her feelings. It doesn’t matter now. They’re all dead. And he has no room to dwell on it when he has his own life to live. Millicent stands in the doorway and hisses.

“Good cat.” He tells her and throws her a piece of buttered toast.

* * *

“Who is she?” Hux asks him later, sitting beside him on the couch. Kylo can feel her, lingering somewhere in the house.

“No one.” He says, and smiles. “Do you want to pick something to watch?”

Hux watches his face for a long moment, gives one single nod and turns back to the television. Have your secrets, he thinks.

Kylo thinks this is one that he would never want to know the answer to.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been years, but hopefully the people who wanted a sequel are still around and will be delighted.


End file.
